Lafayette Club

Par 62 courses often get dismissed as warm-up rounds, but the Lafayette Club demands a different kind of respect. One of the Twin Cities' most storied private clubs, it sits on the northern shore of Lake Minnetonka — the sprawling, island-dotted glacial lake that has anchored Minnesota's most exclusive lakefront communities since the 19th century. The club itself dates to that same era, and membership here has long carried the social weight of old Minneapolis money.

The layout is a short-course design by necessity as much as geography: the Lake Minnetonka shoreline doesn't surrender flat, open acreage easily. What golfers find instead is a tight, precise test that rewards shot-making over power, with water coming into play in ways that feel genuinely threatening rather than decorative. On a course this length, every bogey stings a little more than usual.

Lake Minnetonka's summers run warm and brief, and playing the Lafayette Club feels inseparable from that seasonal intensity — the kind of round that ends on a terrace with a view of the water.